Comment by pjc50

> but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas

The missing ingredient is "intellectual honesty". It used to be the case that when you talked to people on the right they would

    - refer to events that actually happened and true statements about the world
    - accept them in the context of wider events (although there's always been a risk of making policy from one exeptional incident)
    - make an argument that followed logically from those

This did end up in duelling statistics and arguments over what mattered, but that's a reasonable place for discussion. Nowadays it's much deeper into making wild arguments from conspiracy theories with no or highly questionable evidence. Pizzagate. Birtherism. And so on.